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Typesetting is nowhere near as complex as programming. You have much fewer freedoms to play with and hence much less room for creativity. This comparison is not
by Confusion 18y ago
Typesetting is nowhere near as complex as programming. You have much fewer freedoms to play with and hence much less room for creativity. This comparison is not just invalid: it doesn't make any sense.
He uses the fallacy of the false dichotomy: either something is intellectual work, or it requires little thinking. Since typesetting was 'intellectual work' and isn't required anymore, so will programming vanish. The fact that programming is just about the most complex activity known to man, spanning more layers and orders of magnitude than any other activity, is completely ignored.
- adamc 18y agoI agree that programming won't vanish, but certain categories might (or nearly so). There used to be large numbers of assembler programmers; now there aren't.
- biohacker42 18y agoBut there are still A LOT of hardware engineers, and compiler developers. And I'm pretty sure writing drivers requires knowledge of assembly.
- eru 18y agoYou are both right.
- thismat 18y agoLet's not forget all those lines of COBOL that still need to be supported!
- biohacker42 18y agoRight, but we're not about to stop building new chips and other hardware.
- phomer 18y agoI'm not actually trying to say that programming is the same as typesetting. I just wanted it as an example of a 'profession' that came and went purely because of technology. That's why I went on to describe a model that could minimize programming and heavily reuse any earlier efforts. It is the possibility that the model is implementable that could cause a major reduction in the need for skilled programmers. Typesetting just lays out a historic pattern.